Page 4 of Ghosted

But the tension in his voice didn’t escape me. There was something else. Something he wasn’t telling me.

“Casper,” I said, my voice firmer now, though my heart still raced. “What aren’t you telling me?”

His eyes flickered with something I couldn’t quite read. “Well, um…see, there’s a deadline,” he admitted. “I don’t have a lot of time. Halloween…it’s coming. And if we don’t figure this out by then, I’m gone for good.”

My stomach twisted. Halloween was less than a week away.

“Oh my God. I…I need to think,” I whispered, my mind buzzing with a thousand thoughts. This was too much, too fast. I needed to get my bearings.

Casper hovered in front of me. “Okay, I get it. Take your time. But just…please don’t take too long, okay?”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t ready to make a decision. Not yet. All I knew was that everything I thought I knew about the world had just been flipped upside down.

Without another word, I turned and walked to the kitchen, needing some distance from him, from this whole insane situation. My hands were shaking as I grabbed a glass of water, my breath coming in uneven bursts.

I stared into the glass, watching the water ripple, my mind a whirlwind of confusion and disbelief.

This wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be.

Or could it?

Chapter Two

“Deaths a Bitch”

Casper

Being dead was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.

For one thing, there’s a lot of waiting around. I didn’t realize how much time I’d spend just…floating—Literally. And while you might think that being able to pass through walls and soar over hills would be fun, it gets old pretty fast. Plus, since no one notices you anymore, it’s pretty lonely just hanging around and never being seen. Being a ghost definitely gives a personplenty of time to think things over, I’ll say that much. But mostly it just gives you time to feel…stuck.

I was trapped between life and death. Neither here nor there. And the only person who could help me was the one person I never meant to hurt.

Tabitha Graves…

Seeing her again had knocked the wind out of me—if I even had wind left to knock out. She looked as beautiful as I remembered: her big brown eyes and soft, Cupid’s bow lips, and those curves that sent jolts of electricity through whatever was left of me just the way they had when we’d first met. That messy, frizzy hair she was always so self-conscious about? I loved it. It framed her face in a way that made her look effortlessly sexy, even when she wasn’t trying.

But the look on her face when she saw me again? That hurt.

I didn’t blame her. How could I? From her perspective, I’d just disappeared after what was, hands down, one of the best nights of my life—and hopefully hers, too. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew we had something real, something magical that you don’t find every day. That night with her had been electric, every touch, every kiss, every breath we shared felt like it had been building to that moment.

But then I died.

I didn’t see it coming. Hell, no one ever does. One minute I was alive—thinking about how much I wanted to text Tabitha and ask her when I could see her again—and the next minute, I was…gone.

Now here I was—A spook in her apartment, freaking her out, trying to explain how I needed her help to come back from the dead. Yeah, I wouldn’t believe me either.

I floated a little closer to the kitchen, where Tabitha stood gripping the edge of the counter, staring into a glass of water like it held the answers to all of life’s questions. She was trying to process it all, and I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t want to push her, but time was running out.

I needed her. And that wasn’t just because she was my only shot at coming back—it was because she was the only person I truly felt connected to. I didn’t expect that when we first met, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d been drawn to her from the beginning. It wasn’t just her sharp wit or the way she saw the world through the lens of both history and modern practicality. It was something deeper. I just never got the chance to figure out what it was before everything went to hell.

Or, you know—Purgatory. Or whatever this was.

I hovered near the ceiling, waiting, giving her space. She was still trying to wrap her head around what I’d told her—that I needed her help to come back, and we only had until Halloween to figure it out. Less than a week. She didn’t understand how serious the timing was yet.

The truth was, I didn’t understand it either. I had no idea why this had happened to me or how I could come back. I just knew I wanted her by my side. There was something about Tabitha—something special—that told me she was my only chance. But how was I supposed to convince her of that when she was still reeling from the fact that I’d almost scared her to death when I’d reappeared after disappearing without a trace?

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